Why Can't The Law Let Anguished Monkeys Go?

May 24, 1986|By James Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON — It happens with depressing frequency in the law. Every party to a lawsuit has a respectable position. For seemingly defensible reasons, no party is willing to find a compromise position. In a dense fog of principle and precedent, the key issue disappears. This is what has happened to 15 research monkeys who deserve a break that the law won't give them.

The story goes back to September 1981, when Montgomery County police raided the laboratories of the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Md. The police were acting on a complaint that monkeys used in medical experiments had been cruelly mistreated. The raid led to the arrest, trial and conviction of the institute's principal researcher, Dr. Edward Taub. His conviction under Maryland law was overturned on a technical point. Under court order, the monkeys were transferred to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for temporary custody at an animal clinic in Poolesville, Md. Nearly five years later they are still there.

According to evidence at Taub's trial, evidence that convinced a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the animals had been subjected to woeful mistreatment. The object of Taub's research, intended to aid victims of stroke, was to discover if a monkey, deprived of the use of a limb, could be trained to regenerate the limb. Toward that end, operations were performed in which the nerves in the animals' arms or legs were severed. The procedure is called ''deafferentation.'' Taub says the animals suffered no pain, but the jury obviously didn't believe him. Photos of the monkeys suggest they were in agony.

After Taub's trial and the reversal of his conviction, on the grounds that the Maryland law did not apply to animals in federally funded research, a private group known as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) brought suit in U.S. District Court. The plaintiffs sought a court order that would transfer the surviving monkeys from cages in Poolesville to a primate sanctuary near San Antonio. The District Court held that PETA had no standing to sue. That ruling was appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit where argument was heard two weeks ago.

There the matter stands. The most prestigious medical societies have leaped into the litigation to prevent the proposed transfer. They have filed a brief in which they review the contributions to human welfare that have resulted from animal experiments. Because of animal research, they contend, 11 million diabetics lead normal lives with the aid of insulin injections. Such research has prevented the deaths of 30,000 victims of polio each year. Through animal models, the use of chemotherapy in treating leukemia has produced a dramatic increase in cures. If animal research may be subject to challenge in court from humane societies, they fear that medical science will be gravely damaged and that scientists will be so ''intimidated'' by the prospect of lawsuits that they will abandon their careers.

Only fanatic anti-vivisectionists would dispute the value of animal experimentation. There would be no organ transplants, no kidney dialysis, no open-heart surgery without the background provided through observation of laboratory animals. No one questions the sincerity of Taub's purpose. Strokes are terrible. If his laboratory had operated within federal guidelines, and if the NIH and the U.S. Department of Agriculture had done their job, this whole regrettable affair would not have happened.

Dr. Joseph V. Brady, chairman of the board of Taub's institute, has refused to relinquish ownership of the 15 monkeys. He wants the animals to remain available for some appropriate institution to complete the study for which they were acquired. But common sense suggests that unless further ''deafferentation'' is contemplated -- a sickening thought -- the primates may be observed just as well in Texas as in the apparatus of some ''appropriate'' lab.

Frankie L. Trull, executive director of the National Association for Biomedical Research, has written me to protest that ''this case is not about 15 monkeys and the quality or lack of quality of care in a single laboratory.'' But that is exactly what this case is about. The 4th U.S. Circuit is not passing on the future of animal research. The key legal question may be one of the plaintiffs' ''standing,'' but the object of the suit is to let these crippled monkeys, having served their medical purpose, live in peace.